when louis. a lot of jargon in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture. should we keep investing in billionaires at the expense of education and is the purpose of the second amendment to help americans protect themselves from an oppressive government all that more in tonight's big picture rubble and watch out the next time you go out for dinner because your waiter or waitress might have the flu and be coughing all over your food because they're not allowed to take sick days should we really be patronizing restaurants that would rather have sick employees than provide health care and many of us buy into the common myths about happiness but by doing so we often end up

feeling like something's wrong and that we're destined to always be unhappy what can we do to avoid these happiness myths and live happier and more fulfilling the law it's checking into that and it's conversations great lines. it's friday you ready to rumble joining me for tonight's big picture rumble our sherrilyn harley limbaugh former senior counsel with the senate judiciary committee and four former spokesperson for the r. and c. good to have you with us sam bennett president c.e.o. the women's campaign forum and these she should run foundation great to have you back sam and marc harrold libertarian commentator and author of the book observations of white noise an acid test for the first amendment good to have you mark back let's start out with the second school shooting in actually it's not the second it's another this time it happened in california where a troubled student walked into a science class and shot two people before surrendering his weapon to the teacher

this happened at the same time that the that the vice president was on the television networks talking about gun control these are be the last shooting in newtown cannot. it and i have to say want to shooting a school shooting interrupts the vice president speaking to the press on a school shooting you know that you've got a problem i mean there's there's some serious evidence of a problem the n.r.a. was actually gung ho in favor of gun control back in the one nine hundred seventy s. in fact they made their first statements in favor of gun control the week after the black panthers officially announced their presence and showed up with guns and said we have a second amendment right this was in the in the press today so what's what's the deal here who's who's really pushing this and words are going sure well i think we're after sandy hook we're saying that families parents we're all very concerned about what's happening with the school shootings and i know i've seen even at my

daughter's school there's more information about lockdown who is allowed in and you know how are they going to handle this type of situation and i think what the n.r.a. n.r.a. is is sort of wants to push is they have evidence that when these shooters they go to schools because they know that people aren't armed there was a period of pretty much everywhere in america this is true other than walking into a jail with the police so the problem i have is when we just say blanket statement there needs to be armed guards at every school you know you have to take into consideration when you have a big country stringer's even bring down your ass fix it but you know there are a lot of schools in d.c. that do have metal to attack terrorists that do have armed guards so there are. local but i think it really is you look at some other voices in your say of the n.r.a. wrote the original gun control legislation in one nine hundred thirty five to stop

the machine gun violence the n.r.a. wrote back and they wrote in the one nine hundred sixty s. the legislation that actually was in one nine hundred forty s. the provided for police departments to approve concealed weapons permits. what's what's happened in between is the big question and. i come from the state pennsylvania that has the most the highest rates of gun ownership in the country and some more hunters than any other state the country and. the thing i wonder about if we have a lot of gun manufacturers in pennsylvania i have to feel that in america right where we put business first right it seems to me we've put the rights of gun manufacturers and the profits of gun manufacturers in front of everything i have to believe that there's a direct connection between this sort of pushback on reasonable gun control and the interest and profits of gun manufacturers and it almost seems to me like tom that in the wake of these school shootings what's going on is the gun lobby is going well we've got

a problem here but let's see if we can push as hard as we can to get as much as we can with all these folks were putting this crazy legislation martyrs there's reporting today that it was in the mid ninety's that the donations to the n.r.a. from the big gun manufacturers overwhelmed those of the members and basically since that time the n.r.a. has been a front group for the manufacturers prior to that time was a membership organization and since that time they've been taking the position no limits whatsoever on any guns of any kind clips bullets anything isn't this an example of you know what was once a reasonable and civic organization being captured by corporate america no i don't think so you're talking about you're blaming the supply you're acting surprised the supply and you want to do something because there's the supply the reason is because there's a demand there's four million members of the n.r.a. in eighteen days that one hundred thousand new members every gun i think there's three hundred thirty million people in the united states and that's about and that's fine these people have the political clout they have but you know this thing about i have no political clout if you are about your money in the last election is

going to they were the least effective of all the right wing pastors to see if we want to go back to the seventy's you're going to see with joe biden be in charge of this task force just in two thousand and eight railing against obama and say he's going to take his guns out he's not going to let people take his guns the problem nobody's talking about taking anybody's guns that's exactly right and that's what should i help it well knowing there are so many people governor shocking about a guy with oh no there are people talking about that why do you think all is going to song. yes the laws are being broken across the board it was a no school zone this was a shock let's be clear the most important and simplest piece of legislation we need to introduce is that people can't have automatic weapons or they can kill lots of people with him. but that's and we got rid of machine guns you know we did that nine hundred thirty five we got rid of machine guns and they want a way for generate that we did have a ban on assault weapons which were ex-pirate in two thousand and four it was put out of europe but those that were had sort of the crime took us two generations to

get the machine guns out of our society is that why didn't we renew it if it works so well why didn't we see one which was president. of the times you say you cannot accept that or excuse a bad or have no do have clout but they're not they're not just going on as there are americans i don't want out of this is the people that don't like guns don't like the people who like their way to heart of guns i must supporter of sportsmen and sportswomen i don't have a problem with that what i have a problem with is is basically gun manufacturers getting to quote i'm sorry rick this system one of the most powerful lobbies i'm sorry tom in washington people look for that money they get their signals the republicans very often republicans get their signals from the n.r.a. and they push legislation that way yeah so let's not kid ourselves what's going on again i think the problem here is and it's and it's a parallel we'll see throughout some of the issues we're talking about tonight is the interest of business going over the interests of ordinary citizens have it with all i have proposed this why not simply say you know we started back up back in the

twenty's when cars started becoming really really popular we were having a problem people would die in car crashes and so we would stop signs and red green and yellow lights and rules for the road and we started registering vehicles and from manufacturer to destruction requiring insurance i came along about thirty years later and and requiring proof of proficiency for operators we did that because a car could kill somebody guns are made to kill people why not do just the simple same thing surely well i mean what are we talking about people register people have to have graduated every gun should be raster in minutes. right yeah i'm not even suggesting that you know me but i mean we have a process and i say we're all guns guns guns let's let's say that every gun you know has had a serial number has to be registered you have to have liability insurance those kids who were killed in sandy hook if somebody killed them with a car the car insurance company right now geico would be paying a liability policy a million bucks a person but it doesn't kill with

a gun here so insurance here's the problem is that even if we take steps to go down that process there is still a hole under war of the legal guns and those guns also are still used to kill people you figure out where you are never going to shows an underworld of cars that are sold illegally right into world of everything. we do the best in him but we do the best but when i'm not yang is that there is no there is no good fix for this time and i thought i was comfortable with coming up with these blanket you know we've got to come over to this length. all right way i guess everybody's on the record about this so let's go out to taxes republican scream and holler about the deficit they should look at how california fixed its deficit democratic governor jerry brown now has a balanced budget and will run a surplus next year after inheriting a twenty six billion dollars deficit from republican governor arnold schwarzenegger and why because the citizens voted for

a tax increase on the rich proposition thirty his new budget includes increased investments in education should we look into doing something like this i mean it's like a word for california workers that it looks just like the surplus bill clinton built when he modified taxes during his presidency and what was the what was the result a record surplus why is it mark the democrats can balance budgets and slow the growth of spending and republicans can't but it's not exactly what happened here schwarzenegger came into a state that was in disarray a lot of that had to do with the energy situation and enron but the problem here is first of all there's had nothing to do with the taxes the tag no it had actually well you had it with us. majority to pass income tax on versus average b. this first of all there is all taking income as a synonym of who is rich on a national level even a state level in different parts of california just because somebody has a good year and makes income does not make them wealthy problem here is this is the same thing your the government want you to blame the rich but you won't blame the government bottom line here is it should be a flat tax a fair tax some sort of consumption driven yes they started all those walmart

greeter or you but you don't you think that people who are very successful should pay more and they should they should pay on hype amounts of money but they should look at america from the one nine hundred thirty s. to the one nine hundred eighty s. when we were the most successful when i had a fair amount of business success in the seventy's and i was painting of tax rates in the forty's and fifty percent range and it was fine i mean america was doing well with those tax rates and we did not have these exploding budget deficits and then reagan came along and blew the top of california is this great example you know california has a lot of other problems they have record business is leaving california going to other more small business friendly states like texas i mean everybody knows about the x. it is a small business owner is leaving california i don't go to yeah they figure i've never heard it yet but you know there are there are several small there are many small businesses that have left california because they find it very unfriendly to

do business in california have gone to states like texas and the bad out there for you know i never heard ours is generating business as far as the you know union i'm not i just get out actually there and since the center for largest economy the world it's the fifth or use a condom me in the whole world sure you may be losing a few businesses but the ones that are coming in no i'm sorry that's not a kidney is. it is fairly gentlemen there are several studies done by texas public policy foundation where they have showed texas made on many many small businesses have left california and have gone to other friendlier of small business states like nevada california. well there are a zone of talk about the issue that's going on which is when we have a government that does its job which is to make sure that its bills get paid and it looks to have now correct in washington but in california and we had it under bill clinton administration and i'm not speaking as a democrat or republican but as a business woman if you have sources of income in citizens how much money does

a person need if they're earning twenty million dollars a year why not tax more and you have to bail it out on that point we'll come back we'll survive to argue another day in fact in the coming up more in tonight's big picture all right after the break. let me let me i want to know what let me ask you a question. here. is what we have in the bank we have our knives. because this time it was just a bad thing there's again here in this story we're being i didn't really talk about the surveillance. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought

you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture. here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call i don't know. i'm sorry i missed you guys here's an awful lot of. you sir are you know what kind of terrorist cells they want to give us a defeat terrorism. chris. because you're going to. look at you distract us from what you and i should care about because they're a profit driven industry that sells officials that garbage he calls it breaking news i'm abbie martin and we're going to break that.

going back to the big picture rubble joining me tonight are cheryl and harlan. sam bennett and marc harrold let's get back to it let's talk health care a new study by the national institutes of health looks into the health results in the seventeen most developed nations in the world the u.s. ranks near the bottom of the list in several important indicators teen pregnancies as twenty's in from mortality heart lung disease disability rates almost sides with life expectancy we rank dad last among. these seventeen nations on average a man in the us lives for fewer years than a man switzerland trends are getting worse and by the way those other sixteen are those other seventeen countries they all pay about half of what we do want to per

capita basis for health care in the united states is the time to look for a single payer system surely we all know that americans are happy the joke is you know when you're flying back from europe you know that you're on american flight because americans are had so you think we need to be going after the. servant i'm trying to i'm just saying that we know we need to walk more we need to exercise more we need to stop eating fast food this is going to persist with your system no i think it's the way americans live we have the way we eat yes we could walk more but guess what i have lived in those european countries for many years the countries are smaller they have better public transportation systems people walk they ride bikes we have we live in a completely different country geographically and size and whenever you see these studies comparing it to europe it really annoys me because you are comparing i think apples and oranges all this wasn't just europe i mean this is seventeen developed countries including australia brazil but sam you're couldn't disagree

more my dad was the house mr duke university medical system been around the medical business for a while i think the biggest difference here is the american american health care system is based on reactive health care instead of proactive healthcare relative to other systems when my first husband moved we lived in england for a while and i had my two little girls i was visited by the visiting nurse about five days after i arrived there because i was going to be there about six weeks and she wanted to check on the health of the girls proactively in america you're never going to see a nurse until you go into the hospital when i dated a fever in singapore when i lived in singapore growing up my mom brought me to the hospital didn't know i had been gay fever and the doctor yelled at her and said i would have done a house visit on her so i would contend big difference pro i just or is this reaction oh americans are set. terri and they basically choose to be unhealthy by the choices that they make it's bottom line people america have the right to choose to be unhealthy that's why we can so to bands and whatever else bottom line here is

do i think it's the health care system no i mean i think the idea is our health care system less are more reactive than proactive maybe the market should bear that out people demand that of their health care private companies and they'll respond to the market like anything else so ok. a question for michele bachmann has some secrets she doesn't want getting out alex cites walt at salon reports that five former staffers on bachmann's presidential campaign are still waiting to get paid for their work despite the campaign wrapping up nearly a year ago bachmann's national field coordinator peter waldron bachmann has more than two million dollars still in her campaign account but she's refused to pay the five thousand dollars she owes to her former staffers unless they all agree to sign a nondisclosure agreement that prevents them from talking about any an ethic this is a quote a verbatim quote unethical immoral or criminal activity and quote that they may have witnessed on the campaign trail so the question is what happened behind the scenes of the michele bachmann for president campaign that she's desperately trying to keep secret what is it a it was revealed she's been in

a hypnotic trance for the better part of five years oh yes your time is from a. right when are you really tries to night is someone hypnotize you because so matter what are you ask you you give the same answer do you have the ties has someone put you under a trance tonight did you give me the same answer no matter what question i put to you or is it be she's been compiling her own and american list. how many do you suspect of your kaiser being an american and what i would say what i would say is that the news media should do a penetrating exposé and take a look i wish they would i wish the american media would take a great look at the views of the people in congress and find out are they pro america are anti america i think or see she not so coincidentally short of the stock prices of all h.p.v. manufacturers. drug manufacturers around september of two thousand and eleven i will tell you that i had a mother last night come up to me here in tampa florida after the debate she told

me that her little daughter took that took that vaccine that injection and she suffered from mental retardation thereafter. governor mark i don't know my understanding is we have to pick one of these i'll go with or you can come up with your own i think she switches or swings at a lot of pictures in the you know i don't know what she's doing half the time i'll go with b. because i've been called an american on twitter and so i guess i remember who said that so maybe she's got a list going ok. i choose not in the above i'm sorry i'm not i wouldn't vote for michelle my organization would endorse her but i think of ninety percent of what she's dealt with is just outright sexism. that she is the victim of yes indeed that's very interesting yes. none of the bob this well you know i don't i have no idea what's going on but i think as a lawyer you know if you want to get someone to sign a nondisclosure agreement you should do that in the beginning you know the house waiting just makes you. kind of the logic behind that and that's and that's we're

wondering you know why for five thousand dollars why would you risk such but i supposedly such a lot i mean this is now what eighteen months almost two years ago it's a long time to be holding people's money i'm wondering if maybe her husband is having an affair with rick perry could it be that that's terrible. that is a bad idea and. nice to meet you think on that note. thank you thank you thank you. lou season is upon us it's a nasty one this year you probably know of a handful of people who've already can. practive the bug in what the centers for disease control is calling the worst flu season in ten years what's worse is that corporate america is multiplying the harmful effects of this flu season by not

offering workers paid sick time off according to a recent survey by the food chain workers alliance nearly eighty percent of food workers say they don't receive paid sick leave and more than a half say that without those benefits they're forced to come to work when they're sick. for many nurses around the country who don't have paid sick leave and other hospital employees as well they have to hide their illnesses or risk not being able to pay their rent that month when a healthcare worker shows signs of illness they're typically sent home and can't return to work for seventy two hours after their last symptom goes away and since the days of not collecting a paycheck can put a serious dent in the family's finances many nurses and other hospital employees just top themselves up on sudafed for days desperately trying to cover up symptoms no one wants sick people preparing food for them at a restaurant or caring for them in hospitals especially during the flu season but that's exactly what's happening because corporate america is sucking every last

penny of profit they can out of their workers flat lining their wages in the face of increased productivity or busting up their unions corner cutting workplace safety regulations and now cutting time off opportunities for the flu one reason they can get away with this is that there are no federal protections for sick workers here in the united states our country is the only developed nation in the entire world that doesn't guarantee paid sick leave to our workers and now we all have to suffer the consequences of this corporate greed in two thousand and nine the american journal of public health found that as many as five million more people were sickened by the h one n one flu as a direct result of a lack of access to paid sick leave who knows how many more people will be sick and this year but now some are fighting back. the group restaurant opportunities center united or rock united r.c. united has launched

a campaign targeting one of the larger corporate abusers of workers' rights when it comes to paid sick leave darden restaurants which controls more than one thousand nine hundred restaurants including chains like red lobster and olive garden employs over one hundred sixty eight thousand employees there's a brilliant new whether. it was. great. in the second. i mean you want to do this. let's go.

right. up i you know what yes yes yes. it's. right. it's also worth noting the darden earned a profit of a half billion dollars last year and its c.e.o. raked in a not too shabby eight and a half million. presumably he gets paid time off when he's sick by the way once again profits and executive paychecks outweigh the public good corporate america

isn't going to suddenly find it in their hearts to treat their workers better which is why we need to pass federal laws guaranteeing basic paid sick leave to all american workers but until then maybe we can push them in the right direction by taking action with our wallets and pocket books before you go out to a restaurant we're going to go out this weekend or whatever before you call up the restaurant just to ask a simple question do you guys get paid sick leave to your workers i mean you know whether it's your server or somebody making the food in the back do you want them sneezed on your food just ask if they don't then during a flu season like this it's more than likely someone at that restaurant trying to cover up an illness which you may well carry home so both for moral and for very practical health reasons makes a lot of sense to someone else let's start rewarding businesses that treat their employees right and that actually care about their health let's avoid those the put

greed ahead of the health of the rest of us after all who wants to go into a restaurant hungry and come out feeling maybe the opposite well it takes a day typically or so afterwards but because you picked up the flu it's just it's a very simple process to ask the restaurant to call the restaurant or any any other business frankly but in particular restaurants call them up and say do you offer paid sick leave if you do i'll show up if not i want. coming up what if you get the perfect job or find that special someone but for some reason here's the lot happy with your life is there something wrong with you are you just falling for society's common myths about happiness. asked that question tonight's conversations the good.

solution to me.

you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harvey welcome to the big picture.